


The Arc of Conflict, Edda 16: Antarctica, in the Wastes

by bzarcher, solarbird



Series: Of Gods and Monsters [96]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Antarctica, Apologies, Ecopoint: Antarctica, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Goddesses, Gods, Grief/Mourning, Hiking, Identity Issues, Isolation, Michael Ngcobo is Concept-Art Mercy, Omnic Racism, Other, Reconciliation, Self-Acceptance, Self-Denial, Self-Discovery, Self-Doubt, Snow, Soul-Searching, Trans Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Walkabout, Wilderness, respect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-14 22:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21022973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarbird/pseuds/solarbird
Summary: Katya Volskaya's government in Russia has destroyed the omnium Koschei, and held their own against the Gods of Oasis. With no point to additional fighting, the overt war has paused. But covertly, the conflict carries on. The gods, after all, still have a plan, and will do what is needed - one way, or another.Zarya has come to Antarctica, not entirely knowing why, but desperate for answers to fundamental questions.Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflictis a continuance ofThe Arc of Ascension,The Arc of Creation, andThe Armourer and the Living Weapon. To follow the story as it appears,please subscribe to the series.





	The Arc of Conflict, Edda 16: Antarctica, in the Wastes

**Author's Note:**

> dirtyclaws has launched [a public fan-run _Of Gods and Monsters_ discord server](https://discord.gg/pDZMpVT) and invites everyone to come join it. ^_^

_[Oasis]_

> _"See, this is why I said we needed you, Slate," Sombra said, still grinning._
> 
> _Dr. Ngcobo frowned, pausing for a moment before putting the rest of his diagnostic tools away. He'd taken down the last of the neural buffers, now that it was finally safe to do so, and Sombra hadn't stopped smiling since._
> 
> _"I couldn't stop them."_
> 
> _"Yeah," she acknowledged, hopping off the table, shaking out her arms, her hands, really **feeling** everything for the first time in weeks, and revelling in it. "But you stopped them **enough.**"_
> 
> _"Enough for what?"_
> 
> _"Enough to matter."_
> 
> _She stretched, feeling more herself than she had in what felt like ages. **Much better**, her internal systems unanimously confirmed. **Good as new. Gods, it feels good to be able to think properly again.**_
> 
> _He gave her a skeptical look. "You have a plan, don't you."_
> 
> _She gave him a sly look in return. "Other than fucking my girlfriend's brains out?"_
> 
> _"Yes," he sighed, shaking his head. "Other than fucking your girlfriend's brains out."_
> 
> _Sombra just laughed, nodded... and then vanished._

_[Antarctica]_

Snow.

That's all it was, really. Once you got in from the coast, and away from the various stations on and near the coasts, there was you, finite, and there was snow, seemingly endless. Powdery, fine, and very cold, it did not necessairly pack well, but there was so very much of it that it didn't matter.

Not that much ice, though. It surprised her how little. She knew that, from the studying she'd done, from her prep work, but reality is different to study. It was part of why she'd packed so carefully. She may be a...

...she would not call herself a goddess. No. She would not. And likewise, she would not act like one, except when she did, which she would only notice afterwards, and, she suspected, not all the time.

But regardless of all of that, and whatever it might've implied, she was not a fool. So she was ready for all the endless snow, and the surprisingly little ice, and the wind.

Lots, and lots, of wind. Also seemingly endless.

Normally - for a human in outstanding condition - the hike inland to South Pole Station takes sixty days on special skis, skinned for the particular conditions of the polar continent. Several people do it each year, at great expense, guided by professionals, who take small groups along carefully planned and managed paths.

Sixty days assumes hour-long hikes, with breaks in between, until bunking down for the night, repeatedly. It's more a test of endurance than anything else. The trek isn't even hilly, despite some 2800 metres of elevation gain - it's more of a long, slow climb up the antarctic plateau, as one drags one's equipment and supplies along on a sled.

But if you are a goddess, the breaks are not so necessary. Sleep is, of course, every few days - but it's only a few hours, and there is no night when the sun never sets. All that is needed is appropriate clothing - less than anyone else would require - and ultradense calorie supplements for food. Water comes from snow along the way.

March until hungry. Eat, and drink. March until sleepy. Camp, and sleep. March.

For a goddess, it is a 20 day hike, if she pushes herself.

Less, if she pushes herself hard.

More, if she stops along the way.

\-----

Alone.

Zarya marched, alone. Alone, except for her thoughts, and the ever-present _shuff_ of skis on snow.

Five days in, the going had been less difficult than she'd imagined. Even with less gear than normally carried, she had more than she needed.

She'd hoped for a test. She wasn't getting it.

_What_, the skiis said. _What_, one word per shuff, _Do. I. Do?_

And sometimes - when she'd let herself admit it - _What. Am. I. Now?_

Her eyes didn't need the sunglasses. She kept them anyway. She even kept wearing them, since they helped her contacts stay in place in the worst of the wind. Occasionally, she would stop, shelter, apply a couple of moisturising eyedrops, and then charge ahead, a few minutes later.

Sometimes, there were rocks. She would examine them, look at how the winds drove snow into whatever cracks and fissures might exist at the tops of these hills or outcrops or buried mountains, all trailing down under the snow, far below her feet, to the invisible valleys below, with their lost rivers, and hidden lakes.

_What_, shuffed her skis, _Am. I. Now?_

\-----

Mountains.

There were more rocks, here. Larger ones. More of the land itself, peeking out from under the snow. It was nice - variety, of a sort. It made the journey both longer, and shorter, depending upon her mood - but time was not the point.

On the twelfth day, Zarya caught up with one of the tourist expeditions making the straight-line run from Hercules Inlet to South Pole Station, at their halfway camp in the Thiel Mountains. The tourists - in exceptional condition, of course, every one of them - stared at her as she came skiing up to them. They were a little confused, their guides a little dismayed.

"Are you lost?" they asked, not knowing what else to ask this apparition who had appeared in their midst.

"Do not worry," she assured them, with a grin she almost felt. "I am from Russia. I lived in Siberia. This is lovely spring day. It is just too bad there are no bears to pet!"

They didn't understand, of course. They couldn't. But they were friendly - at least, once they got used to the idea that someone could just walk up to them in the middle of the Antarctic mountains - and they traded small amounts of supplies, her lemon and honey-flavoured high-density calorie packs for their only slightly more varied provisions, and they talked for a while about nothing that mattered, sharing the pleasantries of the wilderness.

It was not at all like being home, and she felt that, keenly, for just a moment, as they chatted.

Then the hikers began to settle in for the full-daylight 'night,' getting to sleep before the next stage of their journey, starting in their morning. She smiled, and said cheery goodbyes that she did not feel - "I am on different time zone. Is still morning, for me! Have a good night!" - and headed out, feeling nothing as the moment disappeared behind her.

_Nothing,_ she thought.

_Nothing._

She shook her head, and continued to hike.

\-----

Chasm.

Zarya stood at the top of it, perched along its snowy lip, looking down.

Less and less remained visible each year at Ecopoint Antarctica. Oasis had not revived it, instead allowing the endless snows of the continent to slowly reclaim the abandoned Overwatch base as sacred ground - a monument, to the dead.

The comms tower still stood, mostly - the top had fallen, merging into the side of the snowy cliff, but that didn't hurt anything. Arguably, it helped. It made the tower navigable, if need be, down from the top.

But she did not climb the ruin. She made her way around to the former helipad exit instead, finding it buried, but not too buried to clear - only a couple of metres - low enough she could tunnel it herself, and so, she did, going in the way Mei Ling had gone out on her survival trek not so very long ago.

There was no power, of course. There hadn't been power for many years. Zarya had a power pack with her, but it felt wrong to use it, and so, she wandered the corridors in the near-darkness, her suit's nighttime glow lights more than her eyes needed, a goddess looking, but not finding.

Despite the closed doors, the snow had made its way inside, in places - the base had arguably too many windows, and - very slowly - the inside and outside had begun to merge as the buildings slowly disappeared below the surface. Eventually, snow and ice would take it all.

But not yet. Eventually, but not yet.

And so, she made her way down to the residential suite, and from there, to cryogenics, to where those slowly being entombed lay, untransformed, as they had died.

She placed a skillfully-made artificial white iris, a small slice of carefully-preserved black bread, and a small bottle of Russian vodka in front of the chambers containing the remains of Mei-Ling's friends. She bowed to each of the dead, then retreated to the doorway, where she saluted, then stood respectfully, head lowered, in silence.

"Mei-Ling says hello," she said, after a few minutes. "And that she misses you all, very, very much."

There was no reply, of course.

\-----

Flat.

The area around the South Pole is surprisingly flat, a sprawling plateau, largely unbroken except by the station, and the markers around the pole itself, reset as the ice flows, the station moving a very little further from it each year.

Since South Pole Station is elevated, and has windows, they can see people coming, which isn't even that unusual in the summer. The winter would be a different story, of course. But it's the summer, and researchers come, and researchers go, aircraft fly in and out, the staff count climbs, and the summer-only buildings get heated up and repairs are made while the weather is good. It becomes at least as much a small town as a research and science facility, with people spread across the four large buildings, two old but still in good condition, and two new - so new, they'd just been completed the previous summer. Everyone was still getting used to having all that extra space, and it was still delightful to be able to rattle around inside somewhere warm.

Despite all of that, Zarya's arrival surprised everyone - particularly the logistical staff.

"We weren't expecting you," the operations director said, having brought her in to the controller's office, hoping to find out why this strange woman had come to their doorstep unannounced. "You're not attached to us, or any of the other stations, and you're _not_ part of any hiking group."

"No," said an omnic voice from the doorway, "she's not."

"Ah," Zarya said, turning. "So there you are."

Lynx Seventeen looked at the pink-haired Russian woman, and saw the contact lenses, and saw a distinct lack of blond roots, and knew they had been told the truth.

\-----

"I went to where you had been," Zarya said, a couple of hours later. She'd made her explanations as best she could, and met some of the station staff - particularly the Russians, who knew exactly who she was and weren't surprised that she'd hiked there alone at all - and now sat in Lynx's small office with tea from the station's commissary.

Omnics needed less office equipment than humans, in some ways, and Lynx was no exception. They needed less in the way of visible computer and displays, but in their case, kept them nonetheless. Matters of communication and planning required equipment everyone could use. So a simple desk, in this case with objects and tools, presumably related to work. A small wastebasket, empty. A chair. A second chair, for visitors. To her surprise, pictures on the wall. And, of course, the two of them.

"You weren't there," Zarya continued. "People said you had gone south. So I did, too, walking until I found you."

Lynx nodded from behind their desk, gazing at her, analysing, as they always did, not entirely friendly, but not entirely hostile, either. They had been informed, after all.

"Why?"

They had not been enlightened about _that_.

Zarya looked down, stirring her tea, for no reason. There was nothing she did that brownian motion wouldn't do better. "I don't know why."

They tapped their desk, lightly, an idle motion, adding a small social pause. "That's very far to walk for 'I don't know why.'"

"It is," she admitted. "I thought if I found you, I might know, but I do not." Glancing up, she added, "I do know I am sorry for how I treated you. Last time. When we met."

"You saved my life," they said, the sound of their voice arched, like a single eyebrow.

"And put it in danger, before that." She looked back down, at her tea. "But it's not for... it's for how I... felt. And acted, towards you."

They tilted their head, "You've changed."

Zarya sighed, but nodded an admission. "I have."

Lynx's antennae twitched, an affectation, but also, not one, responding to the smallest of meaningful changes in EMF. "It's not a small change, is it?"

"No," she said, wondering how much they knew.

"Is that how you've come around on my kind?"

"No." Her mind flashed back to Orisa, the warm, the kind, the rush of _feeling_ in her touch, and was no longer sure. "...perhaps."

"And so here you are." Even Lynx wasn't sure what they thought of that. 

"Yes."

She sipped from her rapidly cooling tea, and looked at them again. "I have walked across one continent, and then half of another, and now, here I am, and I still do not know why." 

"You don't?" They stood, and leaned against the wall, behind their desk. "You came all this way to see me, and you don't even know why. We are not even friends."

"No," she agreed. "We are not."

"But here you are, in front of me, as you are now."

"As I am now?"

"As you are now," they nodded, "...meaning no more human than I am."

Zarya blanched - she couldn't help it - defensively, but already too torn to be angry, too aware they where not really wrong, even as she denied it.

"I _am_ human! Still!"

Lynx's antennae managed to indicate both humour and disdain at once. "Your affectations may fool most, but they do not fool me. You are _not_ human, any more than I am - even if we are both, in many ways, _like_ humans."

"I am _human_," she insisted, against herself. "I am _Russian_."

"Those are not the same thing."

"I..." She paused, caught on that, thinking about it. "...I suppose they are not," she granted, and the omnic tipped their head, a single dip, accepting the concession.

Her brow furrowed, as she thought. "Is that why I can... see you... as a person, now? Because we are.... both..." She trailed off, not yet quite willing to say _not human_. "...different?"

"Perhaps."

She leaned forward, elbows on her legs, in the chair, putting the tea on a small ledge running along the wall nearest the chair. "So... how do you... no... how do I handle this? What am I, now?"

Lynx picked up a small fidget object, spinning it around in their left hand, dialing thousands of possible combinations on its array of numbered gears, absently generating sequences of primes. "How would I know? I've always been myself. I did not have to be re-created to be what I am."

She pursed her lips. "Also, you know a _lot._ More than you should. How?"

The synthesised sound of a snort of amusement, or perhaps it was in some way real. "I am a hacker, above all else. Just because I have a straight job for once doesn't change that."

_That's not how_, she thought, and then smirked.

"Sombra."

The whirring of numbers stopped.

"Perhaps."

They started again.

"Or other sources. We do have friends in common, after all."

They put the one fidget device back down, and picked up another, spinning through words for knowledge in a hundred languages.

Zarya nodded, ignoring the soft noise of the toy. "Then..." she hesitated. "Where do I start? What do I... do?"

They flipped the toy, tossing it briefly into the air, and started through words meaning _query_. "I'm a hacker, not an oracle, Zarya. I don't have your answers. You have to figure them out on your own."

"I have... not done a good job at that. I have been trying for months, but all I do is chase myself in circles."

"Much of hacking - real hacking - is figuring out what questions you need to ask." Their hand stopped, the noise disappearing instantly. "Perhaps you're asking yourself the wrong questions."

"But I must know! What am I, now? What do I do?"

They shook their head. "Wrong questions. _Who_ are you?"

"Aleksandra Zaryanova."

"No. _Who_ are you?"

She didn't answer.

"_Who are you?_"

She breathed in, then out, then sagged, then waited, to be sure.

"...I don't know."

They put down the second toy, and picked up a third, a puzzle toy that could be shifted into the shape of any planet, or Earth's moon, with accurate maps. "Where are you?"

"...your office."

"No. _Where are you?_"

"...the South Pole?"

"_Where. Are. You._"

Zarya looked into Lynx's eyes.

"Lost."

Lynx Seventeen nodded, slowly, once, still spinning the puzzle through its places, one at a time.

"Then where should you be?"

"_I don't know!_"

"Really?" they said, and the puzzle stopped. "Where do you want to be, right now?"

Zarya blinked, realised she knew exactly where she'd been trying to go the whole time, and started to cry, just a little.

"...home," she said. "Russia," she added, unnecessarily, as more tears came. "I want to go... home."

"Then why are you _here?_"

"Because home is gone," she said softly, sinking down again, ashamed and yet not ashamed to be crying in front of this... person, out of nowhere, for no reason she really understood, even though she could not stop. "Because... I am gone."

Lynx had no mouth, and could not smirk, but sometimes that doesn't matter, and they did it anyway.

"Gone, and yet," he said, putting down the puzzle, "here you are. At South Pole Station. In my office. Bothering me, for questions."

From somewhere further down inside herself, Zarya snorted a little bit of a wet laugh. Or perhaps it was less than even that - a muted chuckle, half sadness, a quarter mirth.

_Home_, she thought. _I... I need to... be..._

"You know who are," Lynx said, chasing an idea. "You just don't want to."

"No," Zarya said, feeling empty, feeling washed out, but after a moment, realised that while she felt washed out, she also felt like she had washed on to something akin to solid ground. An outcrop, a thin fragment of a ledge, at most - but more than she'd had before now.

_Russia_, she thought. _Home._

"Maybe," she amended, with a sniff. "A little."

One of the contacts slipped, perhaps from the tears, perhaps not. She grimaced and took it out, looked at it, concentrated for a moment, and did not put it back.

"But I do think... I have figured out where I need to go..."

She plucked the second contact from her other eye, rolled the two of them between her fingers into a tiny ball, and flicked it, perfectly, into the small rubbish bin under Lynx's desk.

"...and who I am _not_."

**Author's Note:**

> This is the twenty-fifth instalment of _Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflict_. To follow the story, [subscribe to the series via this link](https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024), rather than to the individual works.


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